Sunday, April 05, 2009

You can't help but poke at the bubble around you. Thinner than the criminal's conscience but just as sturdy when it comes to feeding families. Children with distended stomachs groping in the dark for orange peels and half apple cores. Everyone else around you is making something of themselves, creating, shaping, their thumbprints so fresh and clear on the already drying clay. And you try to reach through the thin film and press your hand against the grey-brown but you never quite make it. And the clay is already crumbling, turning to dust and powder, swallowed by birds passing by just for the winter, migrating to better places, carrying within themselves the lines and curves that so distinguish mothers from fathers from audience members.

And they vomit. The nutritional value of chunks of clay marked with the tips of fingers makes them thrive.

And they fly, soar, through clouds and blue skies and suns wearing masks of happy faces. You wonder how many people can afford these masks, how the strings tend to snap and disappear over time. They tie behind their heads so they'll never figure it out.

And you realize that you're not stuck in a bubble.

You are a bubble.

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